The 7 Biggest Marketing Mistakes, Almost Everyone is Making, and How to Avoid Them.

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The 7 Biggest Marketing Mistakes, Almost Everyone
is Making, and How to Avoid Them.

• Toronto Talks
• 26th June 2007

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What if you..

• Could make more money but not work any harder?
• Could confidently leave your business for periods
  of time without worrying about what youd be
  coming back to ?
• Could market without taking risk?

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What youll discover today

• Where you are making costly but avoidable
  marketing mistakes
• Some key principle you need to adopt to help you
  avoid them
• What you need to do to grow your business
  geometrically

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The 7 Most Common Marketing Mistakes

1. Marketing that gets lost in the crowd.
2. Marketing that targets too broad an audience.
3. Not understanding the lifetime value of a client.
4. Blowing your marketing budget in a one shot
   gamble.
5. Selling instead of attracting.
6. Not systematizing your marketing.
7. Not understanding leverage.

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Why listen to me?

• Built 5 companies using the StreetSmart system
• Personally sold more than 39,000,000
• Tested StreetSmart Marketing strategies with
  100s of companies in a wide range of industries

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Marketing that gets lost in the crowd

• 1992 2,000 commercial messages per day
• 1994 3,000 commercial messages per day
• 2004 30,000 commercial messages per day
• 2006 35,000 commercial messages per day
• Source Empire Research

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What Are Your Prospects Thinking?
Source Chet Holmes
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Commoditization
The Unwritten Rule Whatever you are selling, do
it in the same way as your competition.

• Same benefits
• Same advertising
• /- 20

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4 survival imperatives

• Flight?
• Sex?

• Food?
• Fight ?

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Three brains, one decision maker!
pain
pleasure
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Why we look, sound and feel the same as our
competitors

• We are input focused
• We copy our competitors
• We sell to the market rather than a specific
  niche
• Being different takes more work

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1. Why you have to be unique

• Before you can have opportunities, you have to
  provide value
• Generally the people who provide more value get
  paid more
• 80 of people in your industry are mediocre
• Regulators protect mediocre

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Input and Activity Centered

• Im a financial planner and advisor!

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Outcome Centered Unique Marketing Identity

• WealthWorks helps established business owners,
  crash test their personal financial plans

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Key Principle

• Clear differentiation in the market place,
  enables you to attract more ideal prospects and
  command premium rates

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2. Marketing that targets too broad an audience

• Cant afford to market to the market
• Time
• Money
• Cant serve everyone equally well
• Need to focus on a small number of Ideal
  Clients
• Can afford to spend more
• on acquiring each client

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Monkey Trap Marketing
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Serving All Markets Is A Trap

• Dilutes your differentiation
• Dilutes the quality of your prospects
• Causes confusion
• Stifles referrals
• Makes prospecting more difficult
• You have to work twice as hard

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Signs of an identity crisis

• Everyone is a potential customer
• What I do is hard to explain
• I say something different every time I introduce
  myself
• Everyone knows what I do
• Whenever someone asks me what I do, I struggle to
  answer
• I offer a complete range of products and services
• I try and help every prospect
• Coaching hasnt helped me grow my business

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Key Principle

• Every market has a smaller number of ideal buyers
  as opposed to all buyers. Your best approach is
  to go after ideal buyers

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3. Not understanding the lifetime value of a
client

• How do you set your marketing budget?
• How much should you spend to acquire a new
  customer?

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Key Principle

• Marketing spending should not be ad hoc or a
  specific percentage of sales, but should be based
  on actual costs of acquiring new customers

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4. Blowing Your Marketing Budget in a One Shot
Gamble

• Marketing is a process not an event
• It costs the same to run a campaign that
  generates
• 1 response,
• 10 responses,
• 100 responses
• Cannot dictate what the market should buy
• Usually requires minor changes
• Can only test one thing at a time

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Marketing takes time

• The 1st time a man looks at an advertisement, he
  does not see it.
• The 2nd time, he does not notice it.
• The 3rd time, he is conscious of its existence.
• The 4th time, he faintly remembers having seen it
  before.
• The 5th time, he reads it.
• The 6th time, he turns up his nose at it.
• The 7th time, he reads it through and says Oh
  Brother!
• The 8th time, he says Heres that confounded
  thing again!
• The 9th time, he wonders if it amounts to
  anything.
• The 10th time, he asks his neighbour if he has
  tried it.

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Marketing takes time

• The 11th time, he wonders how the advertisers
  makes it pay.
• The 12th time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
• The 13th time, he thinks perhaps it might be
  worth something.
• The 14th time, he remembers wanting such a thing
  a long time ago.
• The 15th time, he is tantalized because he cannot
  afford to buy it.
• The 16th time, he thinks he will buy it some day.
• The 17th time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
• The 18th time, he swears at his poverty.
• The 19th time, he counts his money.
• The 20th time he sees the advertisement, he buys
  what it is offering.
• Thomas Smith, London England in 1885

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What Should You Test?

• Headline
• The offer
• The guarantee
• The price
• The envelope
• The response mechanism

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5. Selling instead of attracting

• How do you feel when a telemarketer calls?
• How do you deal with obvious junk mail?
• How do you feel about advertisements in the
  middle of your favorite TV show?
• What about pop-ups on the internet?

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The new marketing paradigm

• Clients are smarter and less trusting. They are
  just like you!
• Dont let your marketing show
• Service is more attractive than selling
• Selling usually requires multiple contacts

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Education as bait

• Stop selling and start serving
• Prospects are selfish
• Must hook them instantly
• Educate and solve your prospects pain
• Focus on needs of a specific audience
• Low-risk, low-commitment first step
• Follow up is critical component

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Make the Easy Sale First- Case Study
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Key Principle

• If what you are selling is difficult to sell,
  sell something thats easier to sell than what
  you sell.
• i.e. something free and valuable to your target
  audience, like information they need to avoid
  risks in their business. Education is more
  attractive than pitching

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6.Not Systematizing Your Marketing

• Most financial advisors marketing is reactive
  and tactical
• We get tired of what we are doing
• We forget to do important things
• Need to set up a system
• Clear goals
• Frequent measurement
• Track performance
• Celebrate success

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7. Not Understanding Leverage

• Getting a better result with the same or less
  resources
• Time
• Money
• People
• Other peoples assets

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Marketing to ExistingCustomers

• Would you like to Biggie Size that?
• Would you like fries with that?
• Probably easiest, quickest most
• predictable way to grow sales
• Customer is predisposed to buying more
• Add on must be legitimate value, timely and
  needed
• Must have a credible reason for offering it

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StreetSmart Leverage Formula for Geometric Growth
Number of current clients

(Number of Prospects x Conversion Rate)
x

• Number of transactions per year

x
Average per sale
x
Gross margin

Gross profit
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The Leverage Formula in Action
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Marketing to Existing Customers

• Adopt Most Trusted Advisor stance.
• What else can I do for this client?
• How can I extend this customers buying
  abilities?
• How can I program this customer to buy more?
• Analyze the customers buying cycle.
• Identify logical extensions to your offering.
• Out-sourcing back end products.
• 3rd party producers
• Affiliate programs
• Your own products

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Key Principle

• The most important asset you have in your
  business is not your product or service, but your
  client relationships.
• ---000---
• As a marketer, it is your job to optimize these
  relationships and at the same time, leave the
  customer in a better state than before you
  started to do business together.

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The StreetSmart Marketing System
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Exercise

1. Complete the marketing self assessment
2. Discuss your results and key insights with your
   table
3. Decide on 1-2 key actions you are committed to
   taking.

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Creating the kind of business you deserve

1. Create a unique identity
2. Focus on ideal clients only
3. Spend based on actual acquisition costs
4. Test everything
5. Be patient
6. Educate instead of selling
7. Systematize your marketing
8. Leverage yours and other peoples client
   relationships

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What we learned

• Why its getting harder to succeed
• 7 costly but avoidable marketing mistakes
• 5 key principles to help you avoid them
• How to use leverage to grow geometrically
• A marketing system that never fails

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Final thoughts

• Do you already know about what we covered ?
• If you know about the ideas, what actions are you
  taking on them?
• If you are doing them, dont stand still, your
  competition isn't?
• If you implemented all of these ideas well, how
  much would you be able to grow your business by?

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Free support tools

• www.streetsmartmarketer.com
• "Implementing just one of Michael's strategies
  has increased my customer base by 100...in only
  a few weeks.
• Louisa Nedkov, The Energy Coach
• Thank you for your advice. I wanted to let you
  know that your words of wisdom helped land
  a 14,000 consulting assignment that I would
  likely not obtained.
• Michael Marmur Consultant